My mother is a conservative in most respect. She's a proud southerner and the granddaughter of a local judge back in Virginia. However, she has an odd feminist streak about her at times. She either has a keen eye for sexism or is overly sensitive to percieved sexism, depending on your perspective (I've personally found it worthwhile to trust her instincts). One of the Whitlock house's favorite game shows was the Inquizition. It had a mysterious and snarky host that made derogatory comments towards the contestants that put Anne Robinson to shame. Mom swears up and down that he was sexist and overly harsh on the female contestants.

Another one of Mom's soapbox issues used to be "How come male weather people are 'Meteorologists' and women are 'Weather Girls'?"

It was a good point, but I think it had something to do with credentials. If you had a degree or a license or were a doctor or something, you were deemed a Meteorologist and if you didn't you were a Weather Man or Weather Girl. Of course, an argument could be made about how come it's "Weather Girl" and not "Weather Woman." I don't think there's a particularly non-sexist explanation for that one. In the comic book world, I remember similar complaints about Hawkman and Hawkgirl (though they eventually went with Hawkwoman) and Batman and Batgirl (which they resolved by making the new Batgirl in her teens while the old one graduated to become Oracle).

But back to the Meteorologist or Weather Man/Woman/Girl issue, Dan Lovett over at ChronicallyBiased has more on weatherperson naming than you ever wanted to know:

Many of them have the title Dr. as their introduction. There was Dr. Frank Field at WNBC-TV in New York who named his first born son, Storm. And Storm caught the eye of the weather guru’s at WABC-TV where he pranced across the screen on the nightly Eyewitness News shows. Out Los Angeles way, there was Dr. Fishbeck at KABC-TV. Here in Houston there is Dr. Neil Frank at KHOU-TV. Where do all of these weather Doctors come from anyway? They are all goof balls, not meteorologists. Surely they were all born on the road from parents in vaudeville. Funny thing though, the most likeable weather guy in the country didn’t carry the title of Dr. He was just plain old Willard. Why did most of America like Willard Scott? Because he didn’t pretend to know much about the weather, instead relying on his good disposition to humor all of us and not messing around with all those highs and lows. Like the rest of us, Willard would just look out the window and tell us what the weather was going to be.

Today we have to deal with the Doppler Boys. How could we not exist without these guys to burden our day with their bodacious forecasts that are seldom accurate to begin with. Which Doppler do you believe? Big Arse Double Tracker? Rolling Thunder Doppler? Double D-Cup Doppler? Viper Doppler? Damn Big Doppler? Big Bopper Doppler? Dog eat Dog Doppler? Dos Cajones Doppler? This is the Doppler that can track two systems at once